December 25, 1895.] 



Garden and Forest. 



5" 



GARDEN AND FOREST. 



PUBLISHED WEEKLY BY 



THE GARDEN 4ND FOREST PUBLISHING CO. 



Office: Tribune Building, Nkw York. 



Conducted by Professor C. S. Sargent. 



ENTERED AS SECOND-CLASS MATTER AT THE POST-OFFICE AT NEW YORK, N. Y, 



NEW YORK, WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 25, 1895. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



PAGE. 



Editorial Articles: — The Study of Principles as a Help to Horticultural 



Practice 511 



Quarantine ap;ainst Injurious Insects 511 



Thomas Andrew Knight 512 



California Fruits D. M. Rmvley. 512 



Scale Insects Liable to be Introduced into the United States, 



Professor T, D. A, CockereU. 313 



New OR L1TTI.E-KNOWN Plants :—Stapeha git^antea, {With figure.) W, IV. 514 



Plant Notes 514 



Cultural Department: — Pruning ot Street-trees G. IV. O. 514 



Notes from the Harvard Botanic Garden K. Cameron. 516 



The Eranthemums A^. J. Rose. 516 



Hybrid Perpetual Roses E. O. Orpet. 5 1 6 



Propagating Chrysanthemums T. D. H, 



Solanum capsicastrum, Laslia anceps N. J, R. 



Correspondence:— Chrysanthemums T. D. Hatjield. 



Viburnum Lantana Joseph Meehan. 



Irrigation in New Jersey Professor Byron D. Halsted. 



Meetings of Societies: — Irrigation for Kansas Farms and Orchards 51S 



Recent Publications 519 



Notes 520 



Illustration ; — Stapelia gigantea, Fig. 71 515 



517 

 517 

 517 

 518 



51" 



The Study of Principles as a Help to Horticultural 

 Practice. 



TWO bulletins on the care of fruit-trees, just issued by 

 the Cornell Experiment Station, are not only directly 

 instructive upon the subject of vi'hich they treat, but they 

 furnish good examples of two methods of investigation. 

 One of these, Bulletin No. 103, has been prepared by Pro- 

 fessor Roberts, and it is a record of some very careful 

 experiments undertaken to answer the question whether 

 the comparative failure of the orchards in western New 

 York is not largely due to the exhaustion of the soil. By 

 careful weighing and analyzing of wood, fruit and leaves 

 it was determined with some accuracy that the value of 

 the principal plant-foods — that is, the value of the nitrogen, 

 phosphoric acid and potash — which would be taken from 

 an acre of productive orchard in twenty years would 

 amount to some $400, while the total value of the same 

 plant-foods that would be taken up by the grain and straw 

 of crops of wheat grown on an acre of land for twenty 

 years in succession would not amount to one-third as 

 much. No one would think of raising wheat for twenty 

 years consecutively on the same land, and the wonder 

 is not so much that old orchards fail, but rather that they 

 did not cease to produce merchantable fruit years ago. 

 This experiment, therefore, establishes the fact that there is 

 sufficient robbery of the soil to account for the lessening 

 yields of fruit, but, of course, it does not follow that the 

 simple return of this amount of plant-food to the soil 

 would necessarily give full crops. No doubt, there are 

 other disturbing causes, and we must know, at least, when, 

 where and in what manner the food must be given and 

 what trees to select and how to treat them so that they may 

 use this food to the best advantage. 



Bulletin No. 102, by Professor Bailey, on the contrary, 

 does not contain a single experimental fact. A mass of 

 data has been gathered from wide and long observations 

 of orchards under many conditions, and then it has 

 been attempted to deduce certain principles from them. 

 This is not the usual method of the stations, but, cer- 

 tainly, when such inquiries are conducted in a judicial 

 spirit, they admirably supplement special investigations. 

 The investigation of the behavior of a single tree very 



properly accompanies the generalization from many hun- 

 dred orchards, and it is important to observe that the 

 two inquirers arrive independently at the same essential 

 conclusion, which is, that orchards need more thorough 

 tilling and fertilizing than they receive. 



What we should like to emphasize here is that the pri- 

 mary need of cultivators of the soil is principles rather than 

 information. Broadly, it is education that is needed rather 

 than specific knowledge. People who demand what they 

 call practical instruction really want information for a par- 

 ticular case ; that is, they want rules for some local and 

 inflexible conditions, but really this is what no one can 

 give. The experiment station cannot tell the farmer ex- 

 actly what must be done with his particular farm. The best 

 that can be done is to furnish him with principles which 

 he must apply for himself. He knows his own soil as no 

 one else does, he knows his own resources and limitations, 

 and he ought to be able to make use of general principles 

 as they apply to his own particular case better than any 

 one else. Professor Bailey's bulletin shows him that there 

 may be many causes vi'hy his apple crops fail, but he must 

 ultimately decide for himself what is the fundamental 

 trouble. He may not do this to-morrow, or even next year, 

 but if he familiarizes himself with general laws and studies 

 his land and his crops he will in the end master the prob- 

 lem. If the experiment station were to take charge of his 

 farm and conduct it for him he would in the end be the 

 loser, because he would learn nothing except to rely upon 

 others rather than upon himself, which is a lesson above all 

 others to avoid. 



It is not our purpose to speak of the contents of these 

 bulletins only so far as to explain the different methods 

 upon which they have been prepared, but it may be well 

 to state that one of the reasons assigned by Professor Bailey 

 for the probable failure of many trees to bear paying crops 

 is that they have been propagated from unproductive indi- 

 viduals. This is something which is rarely taken into 

 account, and yet we all know that no gardener would take 

 a cutting from a Rose-bush which bears no flowers. Why, 

 then, should we take a cion from a tree which is unproduc- 

 tive as individuals often are, or from one which is not 

 desirable in habit, or which lacks vigor. It is hazardous 

 to enunciate general laws, but it would certainly seem 

 worth while to select grafts from trees of individual merit, 

 which have been known as productive for a period of years. 

 Time would shovv whether anything is to be gained by this 

 practice, but unless all analogies fail it ought_to prove a 

 profitable experiment. 



An article in another column of this issue, on the danger 

 which threatens the agriculture and horticulture of the 

 country from certain foreign insects, invites attention once 

 more to a subject we have often discussed. The constitu- 

 tional difficulties in the way of preventing the contagious 

 diseases of animals and plants, as well as destructive 

 insects from spreading from state to state, are serious 

 ones, but the subject here touched upon is not connected 

 with interstate commerce, but with importations from 

 foreign countries. It is, no doubt, as much within the 

 power of the Federal Government to make quarantine laws 

 against scale insects as it is to protect men and domestic 

 animals from the germs of disease. The losses which this 

 country suffers through insects are estimated by hundreds 

 of millions of dollars every year, and it is well known that 

 many of the most dangerous of these pests of our orchards 

 and gardens havescome from foreign countries. Cali- 

 fornia has a quarantine officer who is apparently render- 

 ing the state a genuine service, and if the abounding scale 

 insects of the "tropics are to be prevented from invading 

 our southern coasts some similar action must be taken 

 on our Atlantic seaboard. We need to know more of 

 these insects and of their habits, so that we can detect 

 them before they gain a foot-hold here. We know that a 

 dangerous scale insect from California has been found 

 in abundance on the fruit-stands of our eastern states. 



